curated citations to news sources
Rebecca Solnit: Epstein Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg: The Trump Protection Machine and the Epidemic of Violence Against Women
On July 2, the jury delivered a guilty verdict on some of the charges against music mogul Sean Combs for his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women with the help of his extensive staff and deep pockets. He’s also accused in many civil suits of sexual abuse of adults and minors. It seems like everyone promptly forgot about Combs when the facts about financier Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of horrific sexual abuse of at least a hundred girls and women, with the help of his extensive staff, deep pockets, banks, and elite connections – including to Donald Trump – became the next front-page ruckus.
In June, movie producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty in a New York retrial for some of his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women, with the help of his extensive staff, top lawyers, the film industry, some ex-Mossad agents, and of course his deep pockets. In February a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of rapper R. Kelly’s 30-year prison sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking, last year his other 20-year sentence was also upheld, for producing child pornography and enticement of children for sex. Of course his deep pockets and extensive assistance had also been factors in how he too was able to abuse girls for so long.
One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society.
(Rebecca Solnit more…)
Will Bunnett: Counter the Spread of ‘Redpill’ Masculinity by Guiding Men to Grow
-
Ken Klippenstein: Pope Leo on War
From Gaza to Ukraine, the new Pope isn’t afraid to speak critically
Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope, hasn’t shied away from speaking critically about wars involving America. Or its allies. Or its adversaries.Whether or not you’re Catholic (I’m not), that a figure as prominent as the Pope detests the world’s forever wars is a big deal: even more so given that he’s a baseball-loving American from the birthplace of the military industrial complex.
Leo made headlines last week for speaking out against the “barbarity of war” following an Israeli strike that destroyed the only Catholic Church in Gaza.
The vibe of the media coverage implied that the Pope cared because the casualties amongst the civilians who had taken refuge there included Christians. That’s a misread: Leo has been an outspoken critic of today’s wars since he was elected Pope on May 8. By my count of Vatican press releases, Leo has uttered the word “war” on at least two dozen separate days since, addressing not just Gaza but the wars in Ukraine, Iran, Syria and Myanmar, as well as about militarism in general. I’ve produced a timeline of Leo’s remarks on war below.
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
-
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 30, 2025
On July 2, 2024, just about a year ago, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts told the listeners of Steve Bannon’s War Room webcast: “[W]e are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back.” Roberts pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States the day before giving the president absolute immunity for committing crimes while engaging in official acts.
“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it’s vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts said, adding that the nation needs a strong leader because “the left has taken over our institutions.” “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Roberts was the man who organized Project 2025, the blueprint for a new kind of government dictated by a right-wing strongman. Creating that new government would require a president willing to act illegally, stripping the secular language of civil rights from public life, packing the government with loyalists, ending the social safety net, killing business regulations, and purging American institutions of all but right-wing ideologues.
When Americans learned about Project 2025, they hated it. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that only 4% of Americans saw the project favorably. Even among Republicans, that number climbed only to 7%. For those identifying as MAGA Republicans, the number rose to just 9%.
So Trump and his campaign advisors denied that he had anything to do with the plan. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on social media in July. “I have no idea who is behind it.”
And yet six months into the second Trump administration, on the sixtieth anniversary of the law that symbolized the modern American state by establishing Medicare and Medicaid, it’s clear we are indeed in a revolution designed to destroy the government we have known in favor of the radical right-wing government envisioned by those who wrote Project 2025.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
-
Sarah Jones: Woman Stops ICE Mid-Racial Profiling
A woman stopped ICE from what appeared to be racially profiling in downtown Los Angeles, chasing them down while recording and yelling at them about the temporary restraining order.
-
Bulwark: Trump’s Unqualified Hires Are Making America More Vulnerable to Attack
The most serious jobs. The most unserious people.
-
Democracy Docket: Republicans Release Proposed New Texas Congressional Map, Could Add 5 GOP Seats
(Democracy Docket more…)
-
Bill McKibben: How the Grift Works
Trump pulls off a nasty con–and maybe he gets rolled too
… On the first day of his term, Trump set up the con by asking the EPA to evaluate its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions were dangerous. Yesterday, EPA czar and former failed gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin dutifully made his long-awaited announcement: nothing to fear from carbon dioxide, methane, and the other warming gases.“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said when he first announced the idea. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”
Trump didn’t really need to do this in order to stop working on the climate crisis—he’s done that already. The point here is to try and make that decision permanent, so that some future administration can’t work on climate either, without going through the long and bureaucratic process of once again finding that the most dangerous thing on the earth is in fact dangerous.
The problem with this simple one-two punch from Trump and Zeldin is that someone will challenge it in court as soon as it becomes official. …
(Bill McKibben more…)
-
Bulwark: Schumer’s Moment of Truth
The September government-shutdown deadline will show us how willing Democratic leaders are to take on Trump.
-
NY Times: The Tariffs Kicked In. The Sky Didn’t Fall. Were the Economists Wrong?
…
Just as the models predicted, growth has indeed slowed, and inflation has risen. If you look at the first half of the year as a whole, there is more than a hint of stagflation, that dreaded combination of slow growth and inflation. …Not all of the slower growth and higher inflation is the result of tariffs. Many factors are at play, including substantial reductions in immigration. But the latest forecasts from the Yale Budget Lab (where I have an advisory role), like many other such analyses, see a 0.5-percentage-point reduction in growth this year and a gross domestic product that is persistently 0.4 percent lower than it would have been without the tariffs.
Note the “persistently.”
The annual growth numbers will probably creep their way back up close to normal, but even if that happens, the G.D.P. will still lag what it would have been — just like a runner who gets back up to speed after a stumble but never regains her position. Even if the current slowdown ends by next year, the United States will be about half a percentage point behind where it would be if the slowdown hadn’t happened in the first place.
Half a percentage point may not sound like much, but in an economy as huge as the United States’, it amounts to a loss of about $150 billion. That’s the equivalent of every household in America taking around $1,000 and lighting it on fire — then doing it again every year. Forever.
Imagine if a president ordered Americans to do that. It would be remembered for decades as one of the largest unforced economic errors in U.S. history. But that’s the practical effect of these policies. Still, for all that waste, it’s a far cry from some of the dire warnings about recessions, economic crises and stock market collapses that we heard in April. Why?
In part it’s because economists, including me, suffer from tariff derangement syndrome. We find ourselves disproportionately worked up every time they are increased. Business leaders and financial markets can suffer a touch of this at times, too. Another factor is that Mr. Trump pulled back from the most consequential tariff, 145 percent on products from China, which would have been like an immediate trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies, and has pared back some of his tariff increases on key economies like the European Union and Japan.
(NY Times more…)
-
Robert Reich: The Fine Print of Trump Fascism
The Trump regime is taking over every major institution in America. Here’s how.
-
Disobey in Advance: Trump threatens to prosecute everyone
(Disobey in Advance more…)
-
Adam Mockler: Trump’s Epstein Lies Keep Changing. I’m NOT Letting It Slide.
And this time, there’s flight data to prove it
-
Decoding Fox News: Jeffery Epstein? Fox Has a Big Fake Scandal About Obama to Obsess About
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 7/27/25
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
Leave a Reply